4

CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / People and Places Indoors

have to adjust each part of the image sepa-

rately and then try to rebuild it; as a result,

you should only use this as a last resort.

Not all mixed lighting is bad; actually, some of it

can be used to great effect. The different light can

actually draw your eye to different areas of the

image. When it comes to looking at a room, the

lights that are present are important, and they

were most likely placed carefully to create a mood

and feeling. Keep this in mind and try to make

sure that you don’t ignore the lights that are pres-

ent; work with them instead.

The image in Figure 4-19 is an example of not

only gelling the lights correctly, but also of add-

ing some lights to the scene to get the best look.

The room looks simple enough, but photographer

Larny Mack had to do a lot of work to get it just

that way. The ceiling lights in the room are tung-

sten lights so the camera’s white balance was set

to tungsten, which caused the late evening light

to look very blue outside; then a couple of extra

lights were brought in to help add some light to

the room. If you look at the shadow on the wall

behind the plant in the center of the room, you

will see a distinct shadow of the plant, which

could only be made from a light coming in from

the far left. The strobes used were covered with a

gel that turned the light into one that had the

Kelvin temperature of a tungsten light. This

made the additional light the same color as the

built-in lights and it rendered correctly as the

camera’s white balance was set to tungsten. To

gel a flash so that the color matches tungsten

lighting, you add an orange gel, usually called a

CTO or Color Temperature Orange. This is one

of the most useful gels to have because it turns the

color of the light from your flash the same as that

from a regular tungsten household lightbulb.

placed in front of a light to change it’s color.

The color of the gel is important, as it needs

to turn the current color of the light into the

color that matches the other light in the

room. The most common use is to neutralize

the off-putting green cast produced by fluores-

cent bulbs by covering them with magenta

gels. The addition of the magenta to the green

creates a more even white light. The magenta

gel needs to be covering the tubes, so before

setting out to gel the lights, make sure that

you can actually get to the bulbs.

■   Create a custom white balance. If the lights

are close in terms of color, then you can cre-
ate a custom white balance. Check your cam-
era manual for the directions on how to save a
custom white balance. Just make sure that the
area you use is illuminated by all the lights
present and is not just directly under one type
of light.

■   Know which lights work together. Lights

that are close together on the Kelvin scale
can be used together and will look fine. That
means that sunlight and warmer incandescent
lights, including the light from a flash, are
similar enough to be used together. The white
balance you use should match the dominant
light source. If there is more sunlight, then
the white balance should be set to daylight. If
there is more light coming from the incandes-
cent bulbs, then set the white balance for
incandescent, and if the flash or flashes are
the predominant light, then set the white bal-
ance for flash.

■   Postproduction fix. It is possible to adjust the

white balance using software, but this usually
takes a lot of work, as you will most likely